"I didn’t see anything because I wasn’t at the campsite. I was here in the bar all night. I never went out there, so whoever you got your information from is lying."

Jesse stormed off, and Jo and Sam exchanged a look.

"Well, looks like someone is lying," Sam said.

Jo turned back toward her beer. "They usually do when it comes to murder. The hard part is figuring out who’s doing the lying and why."

Chapter Eight

On the way home from Spirits, Sam couldn’t help thinking about the dog, Lucy. The shelter was on his way, and it was still open, so he swung by just to make sure Lucy was doing okay. Hopefully, she’d be gone, picked up by her family.

She hadn’t been picked up, but Eric had taken good care of her, and she was nestled in a thick sherpa-fleece-lined dog bed in the corner of a squeaky-clean kennel. Someone had washed her and groomed out the mats, and her fur shone like silk.

Sam squatted in front of the kennel door, and Lucy trotted over, eagerly sniffing his hand.

"Hey, girl, you’re looking good." She smiled and looked up with hopeful whiskey eyes.

Sam patted her between the bars then stood and turned away.

Lucy whined.

Sam turned back. She was seated on her haunches, her tail swishing back and forth and those eyes looking right into his soul.

"Sorry, I can’t take you home. You wouldn’t like it. You’d be alone every day and most nights, too."

Lucy shot him a recriminating look. When it became clear that he wasn’t there to spring her from the kennel, she turned her back on him and curled up in the bed, facing the other way.

Sam headed to his hunting cabin. He’d inherited it from his grandfather, and it was his own slice of heaven on earth. It wasn’t big, just two bedrooms and a loft, but it had plenty of room for him and his daughters when they came to stay.

Evie had hated the place. She’d said it was too far out in the woods. She hated the deer-head mount that hung on the fieldstone fireplace and said it always seemed to be watching her with its black eyes. The taxidermy fish that dotted the rounded log walls freaked her out.

Funny thing, those were all the things Sam loved about the place. Especially the fish. Gramps had been an avid angler, and Sam still remembered the day Gramps had let him help pull the giant salmon they nicknamed Charlie out of Lake Howard. Charlie had gone on to win the county ice-fishing prize—five thousand dollars—that season, and he now hung proudly displayed on the wall above the overstuffed couch.

Evie had refused to live here. They’d bought a big old house closer to town, and she’d pestered him to sell the cabin, but he’d hung on. Good thing, too, because the cabin had outlasted her. Maybe Sam had always known that would be the case.

Sam tossed his keys on the aluminum fish-shaped tray beside the door and headed for the fridge, where another beer awaited. A feeling of calm settled over him as it always did when he was at the cabin. It was still pretty much the way Gramps had left it. The way he remembered it being his whole life. Since Evie had taken all their combined furniture in the divorce, he’d simply moved right into the cabin and left it as it had been when he inherited it.

The furniture was worn but comfortable. The rustic decor included many items made out of birch bark and logs. Old family photos littered the pine tables, and his grandmother’s homey touches could be seen in the flow-blue china dishes displayed in the china cabinet and the quirky antique salt and pepper shaker collection that lined the kitchen windowsill. Even the old jadeite-green batter bowl that Gram used to let him lick her homemade cake batter from still sat on the stainless steel counter. The place was home.

The best part about it was that Gramps had had the foresight to buy up twenty acres of land, so Sam didn’t have a soul nearby. Nothing but deer and bears for company, just the way he liked it. He even owned a few acres across the street, where the land sloped down to reveal a pond. Sometimes at dusk the deer would come to the edges of the pond, and Sam would sit on the porch to watch them, just as he’d done with his dad and Gramps when he was a little boy.

Thorne had approached him about buying up part of the land, but Sam would never sell. Thorne would only get it over his dead body.

Sam brought the beer over to the little desk situated under the overhang of the loft. He cracked the small window on the wall next to the desk just an inch. The cool night air washed over him. In the woods, he heard the hoot of a barn owl and the reply of another.

He sipped his beer and thought about Jo. He admired the way she’d handled Jesse. In fact, she was probably one of the best cops he’d ever worked with. Funny thing, though, even though they’d been side by side every day for four years, he still felt as if he didn’t really know her. Sure, they hung out sometimes and talked a lot at work, but there was something there, just below the surface, that he couldn’t put a finger on. Something in her private life she wanted to keep private. Then again, who could blame her? Sam had some of that himself.

He fired up the computer and navigated to the financial site where he had his 401k just as his phone dinged.

He pulled it out of his pocket. His daughter, Hayley.

Hey Dad, just checking in. U keeping everyone honest up there?

Sam’s heart expanded. One good thing had come from his first marriage—his twin daughters. He typed a reply.

Much as I can. How’s school?

Hayley was studying at the Boston School of Pharmacology. Her twin sister, Marla, was studying marine biology, also in Massachusetts. He missed them both. They were too far away.

Semester almost over. Coming up to visit soon.

Sam replied:

Can’t wait.

The phoned dinged again. Marla this time. Sam smiled. When one of them texted, the other was soon to follow. He exchanged a similar text conversation with Marla. He figured they’d come to visit at the same time. Sam made a mental note to make sure there were clean sheets for the guest room and loft.

Texting with his girls brought up thoughts of their mother, his first wife. Vanessa. They’d been high school sweethearts and had a volatile relationship. It had been both good and bad. In the end, it was mostly bad. Still, she’d had some sort of hold on him. Sam thought maybe she had a special place in his heart because she was the mother of his children. Whatever the reason, he could never refuse her anything. They’d tried to get back together a few times, but it never worked out. When she moved to Las Vegas, it had been a relief.

Thoughts of his daughters also reminded him of Dupont’s threat. Had his words just been idle speculation, or did Dupont know more about what had happened during Sam’s cousin Gracie’s rape trial twenty years ago than Sam thought he did?

The rape had happened in Boston, and two of the rapists had been Harvard students, just like Dupont. But Dupont’s name had never come up. He’d acted shocked and conciliatory back then. As far as Sam knew, Dupont hadn’t even known them.

The trial had been splashed all over the papers, so Dupont knew enough just from that, but how much did he know about the part Sam and Mick had played in making sure justice prevailed?

Sam turned back to his computer. What did it matter what Dupont knew? He didn’t regret what he’d done. Sometimes the system needed a little help to make sure justice prevailed and that people couldn’t buy their way out of prosecution.

And sometimes you needed to skirt the system to make sure those that needed help the most got it. He clicked into his retirement account and withdrew a sizable chunk of money. He couldn’t do anything to bring Tyler Richardson back to his family, but maybe this would help ease their pain.